This weekend was pretty low key and the weather had somewhat of an impact on it. Cold snow and wind. Yay. On Saturday, it was a round trip of nearly 3 hours of driving to Fallon, NV for the Regional Middle School Wrestling Championships, for which Spencer qualified. Arising before dawn, we headed into the rising sun to watch him wrestle. For approximately 100 seconds.

He was the lowest seed in the championships, and his first match was against the number 1 seed. It showed. Painfully. All I can say is at least Spencer was gracious enough to bow and allow the instantaneous cradle at the start. :-) Total match length: 12 seconds.

His second match was somewhat better (it was a double elimination tournament) in that he lasted into the second period. To his credit, he went for a move that failed, and ended up on his back. Never try - never succeed, though sometimes you will fail. As Teddy Roosevelt said:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Afterward, we headed back to the west in a dust- and sandstorm. I cringed at every gust of sand pelting my car. I had briefly toyed with the idea of going to Sand Mountain for a quick look-see, but the winds and blowing sand nixed it. Maybe another day - a calmer day - I'll head out there and poke around. Rumor has a stash of cash in a cave in the vicinity. Maybe I'll create a new sport: treasure hunt running. That's where you run from unlikely place to unlikely place looking for treasure that isn't there, racking up the miles. Yay!

I am very proud of Spencer and his accomplishment. He went from never having wrestled to finishing 8th in the regionals in only six weeks. Pretty scrappy, mi hijo!